OTTAWA — The Islanders looked uninspiring and discombobulated for long stretches Saturday. Goaltender Ilya Sorokin offered little proof that his early-season struggles are behind him.
At the end of a wild, back-and-forth afternoon, though, they had shown gumption and resilience to work through the pile of mess and emerge with a 5-4 win over the Senators following a third-period comeback punctuated by Anders Lee’s game-winner.
Despite having another rough afternoon, Sorokin did help set the stage for the comeback when, with the Islanders trailing 4-3 early in the third, he turned aside Shane Pinto’s penalty shot, which had been awarded after Matthew Schaefer tripped the Long Island native on a short-handed breakaway.
Just a few minutes later, the game was tied at four when Kyle Palmieri ripped Mathew Barzal’s feed past Linus Ullmark.
Sorokin was, at least, noticeably better in the final 20 minutes, stopping a trio of in-tight shots around the halfway mark of the period and keeping Ottawa at four goals. That kept the door open for the Islanders, and finally, they took advantage at the 18:55 mark of the third.
That was when Lee wrestled the puck away from Jordan Spence, found himself in alone against Ullmark and slid it past him to give the Islanders their first lead of the game.
It was the only lead they would need, and the only one that mattered on a day that showed the Islanders, if nothing else, have plenty of gumption and little quit in them.
Still, below the headline, there was plenty to worry about here.
Less than 48 hours after putting forth a complete effort to defeat the Oilers, the Islanders struggled defensively, failed to consistently backcheck and hung their struggling goalie out to dry.
How exactly to distribute blame between Sorokin and the pitiful performance in front of him, with the defense missing Alexander Romanov due to an upper-body injury, is a question that’s up for debate.
But even with the Islanders playing terrible defense in transition, Sorokin gave up a trio of goals on Saturday with no traffic in front plus a fourth with minimal traffic — a bad sign for any goalie.
The Islanders looked to have pulled themselves back into it after going down 2-0 early in the second when Emil Heineman and Bo Horvat each scored within 1:18 to tie it back up.
By the second intermission, though, the Islanders had twice handed the lead back, with Tim Stutzle scoring the 3-2 goal on a break where no one looked to be in the right spot and Dylan Cozens doing almost the exact same thing to make it 4-3 just 1:02 after Maxim Shabanov had tied it again.
That was after a first period in which Sorokin had allowed David Perron’s short-side look on the power play to trickle through his legs, and in which the Islanders had failed to even record a shot on a five-on-three power play that lasted 1:29.
Sorokin, who has now coughed up four goals in each of his first four starts, finished the afternoon with 30 stops on 34 shots, Perron’s opening goal on the power play standing as a particular lowlight.
An ugly win, though, is worth exactly as many points in the standings as a 5-0 blowout, and the Islanders would much rather be working through their issues after winning than losing.
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